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Gnome 2.4 Release (d)
chendo writes "Gnome 2.4 will be released today. Here is the link to the article on Ars Technica. GNOME 2.4 is the result of quite a bit of work toward complying with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which mainly focus on user interface consistency and predictability. This release has also undergone some general polish, and it can finally be said that the GNOME 2 platform has achieved maturity with this release. The Epiphany web browser, a major new component of GNOME, also makes its debut with this release. (From Footnotes)"
All KDE and Gnome Zealots please board this thread, forsaking all other threads within this topic.
;)
To make this new guideline more comfortable for the really and truly devoted:
- KDE had all of the new features three releases ago. Please get Gnome development out of the way of The One Real GUI(tm)
- KDE whiners: eat our dust! (Gnome, The True Gui for Real People)
A Console/Lynx user... (Yeah, right...
Karma? What's that again?
1) Main menu doesn't respond to alphabet keybindings ala IceWM, KDE and Windows 95!
:)
2) Taskbar doesn't reflect order that programs were started in. It inserts new buttons at random positions.
GNOME rules, but these two things (among the Metacity wireframe and animation niggles) are real problems. For all the UI work, it's a shame they can't get such elementary stuff right.
Still, I'll be downloading it tonight
When is _is_ out, you'll have all sorts of release notes and screenshots to look at. Slashdot is announcing non-existant releases again :)
Learn how to use the GnomeVFS library to extend GNOME, enabling drag-and-drop and other features across multiple protocols and file systems. This article gives you what you'll need to extend GNOME and develop your own extensions to the virtual file system.
Well, GNOME has already won awards for its accessibility work, and it has a mature framework for dealing with this (disclaimer: I've never tried it, just heard people praising it).
The article itself points this out in two places.
From the (f*******) article:
Gnome 2.4 ships with GOK, an award-winning dynamic onscreen keyboard. It supports Direct Selection, Dwell Selection, Automatic Scanning and Inverse Scanning, and includes word completion. A detailed overview can be found on the GOK website.
Gnopernicus, the second accessibility application to ship with GNOME, provides a number of assistive technologies for people suffering from visual impairment. Most notably, it includes a screen reader, a screen magnifier and a Braille writer.
One of the big concessions that I've heard about Windows is that it has a lot of accessibility features that weren't present in other previous GUIs.
That's actually not true. The X-Windowing-System has come with xmag virtually for ever. High contrast themes are not hard to create. You can make icons and fonts whatever size you want. We've even got sticky keys. The only thing X is missing as far as accessibility is keyboard control of the mouse cursor. Then again, you can always run ratpoison and be rid of the rodent forever.
You've been lied to my friend.
Gnopernicus, the second accessibility application
How can you provide accessibility functionality thru an unpronouncable application ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
No way to edge-flip to another desktop.
Thus no d'n'd windows across desktops. Pager sucks for this at 16x12.
Gnome-panel regularly poops out at shutdown.
Metacity? Feh. Bring back sawfish (and I mean updated!). The introduction of predictability has led to a sharp decrease in customisability.
I have on average 20 terminals open. If one dies (e.g. because it's a shell window on a machine not available from my current location at start-up), down go the others. This is wholly unacceptable. Because of this, I almost switched to KDE - but it only supports 16 desktops which is Fucking Lame. Excuse me.
Other than those few issues, Gnome (2.x) is very stable, reliable, and well-featured. Keep up the good work (and please attend to that terminal problem).
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
You know, this logo is the really old one. Any chance of slashdot changing it?
The GNOME section icon is out of date: GNOME changed their logo about a year ago. I've done a new topic icon with the new logo if one of the slashdot editors is interested in putting it in.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Unlike some other browsers, in Epiphany you will not find half a dozen ways to use tabs and manage cookies and bookmarks, as Epiphany is targeted towards the average user.
And IMHO that's the wrong approach. *Especially* for the less technically inclined it would be better to have as many different ways as possible to do something. If you look at usability studies they always say how the test persons all tried different things to do the required task and how half of them got stuck on the way and didn't know what to do. One thing Windows gets right is that there is always more than one way to reach your goal. (e.g. you can adjust the time by double clicking on the clock, by using the context menu of the clock, by using the control panel etc.)
Having one elegant solution is nice and appeals to the mathematician in us all but if you look at speech there are many different ways to express a thought, perhaps one is more elegant than the others but all may be correct and logical. (to go back to the clock example: user A thinks "I want to change the time, that should be possible by doing something with the clock thingy" but in user B's opinion it's "I want to change a setting, it should be in the control panel")
IMHO, GUIs should try to enable users to do things their way and therefore it's better to have as many approaches as possible for a task
jm2c
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
It's an integration thing... Firebird/Mozilla/whatever else has it's own way of doing windowing, unlike Epiphany, which is GTK2 based, and integrated with the Gnome config options.
Try Shift-Numlock, it worked for me for ages
Must...not...respond....to....troll...but can't help it
I lurk on the kde dev mailing lists and the number of changes upcoming in 3.2 is pretty impressive: A lot of new PIM features, the Safari changes to KHTML, speed improvements. KDE is at the stage where new releases are really adding polish rather than making major changes, but there are still a lot of good new things going in.
The Gnome-panel bug is a new one for me; filing a bug report would likely be very appreciated by the devels.
Sawfish: Just run it. There are some people hacking on it, I believe, so it should be maintained. And tell the sawfish devels if there is something you miss.
The terminal: They are all the same application with multiple windows; cuts down on resource use. Of course, if it dies, so do they all - that's the downside. You can, however, start a new terminal, explicitly stating that it should not be another instance in an existing gnome-terminal application:
gnome-terminal --disable-factory
That will give you an independent terminal instance that will not be affected. Of course, you pay by a bit higher total resource use, but that is probably worth it for you.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Both Galeon and Epiphany use Gecko, the Mozilla rendering engine. It's unlikely that they are much older than Mozilla itself.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
You gotta love Ars. The first few paragraphs describe in layman's terms why Windows and the Mac have consistent GUIs and why Linux does not. I hope the main drivers of Linux desktop adoption (the Gnomes, KDEs & Red Hats of the world) pay very close attention to the implications of this message. It's been said many times, but warrants repeating again: Linux desktop adoption is suffering from a lack of consistency across applications.
5 is a button click and and you change what button it is by clicking / for left, * for both, and - for right. + is a double-click. 0 is button hold, . is release.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
Firstly, Gnome is not an X Window Manager.
Secondly, only two 'desktops' have their own 'integrated' browser; Gnome (Epiphany) and KDE (Konqueror).
The purpose of the integrated web browser is to provide a default for users, and to provide extra functionality through tight integration with the desktop. Think Internet Explorer in Windows.
- Imagine if you installed your new Gnome and tried to browse the web, only to find no browser available
- Epiphany views can be embedded in Nautilus
- Epiphany strictly follows the HIG and other Gnome2 standards (GConf etc)
In a decent desktop, every basic task should be accomplishable through a default suite of applications; playing media, writing documents, browsing the web, checking your email. And each of these components should be substitutable so those requiring extra functionality (or with a simple preference) can drop-in their preferred application. This is part the Utopia the Gnome project is working towards.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
Actually, Mandrake is compiled for i686 but only using the i586 instruction set, while Red Hat is compiled for i686 utilising the i486 instruction set for compatibility. Why it's still called 'i386' is anyone's guess.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Maybe this one of the areas where free software really has a hard time catching up: small market, highly sophisticated software, small "coolness" factor, and very smooth desktop-integration a requirement...
As much as I like gentoo, it doesn't release packages immideatelly after they are released.
/etc/make.conf
nano -w
Advanced Masking
# ================
#
# Gentoo is using a new masking system to allow for easier stability testing
# on packages. KEYWORDS are used in ebuilds to mask and unmask packages based
# on the platform they are set for. A special form has been added that
# indicates packages and revisions that are expected to work, but have not yet
# been approved for the stable set. '~arch' is a superset of 'arch' which
# includes the unstable, in testing, packages. Users of the 'x86' architecture
# would add '~x86' to ACCEPT_KEYWORDS to enable unstable/testing packages.
# '~ppc', '~sparc', '~sparc64' are the unstable KEYWORDS for their respective
# platforms. DO NOT PUT ANYTHING BUT YOUR SPECIFIC ~ARCHITECTURE IN THE LIST.
# IF YOU ARE UNSURE OF YOUR ARCH, OR THE IMPLICATIONS, DO NOT MODIFY THIS.
#
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86"
You'll get stuff a LOT faster. I've been using that "unstable branch" (if you will) for a year and a half or so with zero show-stopper problems on 5 or so machines. OK, OK, there's a bad realease from some developer from time to time, but Portage will down-grade it next emerge -u world if there's something really bonked with a package or ebuild.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Hmmmm... maybe this is why Microsoft does exactly the same thing with Windows..... Nah. It must be because they are "evil".
Because you can't get rid of Internet Explorer in Windows. If you don't like Epiphany, you can delete it and use Firebird or Konqueror or whatever instead, and Gnome will keep working.
Try to install XP without IE.
256mb of RAM should be fine. The difference in memory usage between a bare windowmaker desktop and a KDE one is about 60meg (~34meg -> ~90meg). That's worth about what, $20? Considering the vast amount of functionality that gives me, I think that's a worthwhile trade off.
Back in the day, I was a major lightweight system zealot. I used Ratpoison or Ion at work (if you though fvwm was lightweight, you ain't seen nothing yet). Then I realised that saving 0.5 seconds on launching a terminal window didn't make me any more productive, but having excellent integrated apps like kmail and konqueror did.
U dont even have to do all that crap. Just right click on the kde desktop, go to properties and specify 'n' number of desktops.
Done.....
Re: metacity vs sawfish
I used to think the same way as you did, hated the lack of features, bitched on the lists, etc. But at some point I forgot to switch from Metacity to sawfish and grudgingly used it, and after a while, found I didn't miss the features I fought so hard to have. Pageflip is nice, but do I use it? Nope. Maybe it's just me as a user adapting to the lack of features, or maybe it's the fact that as a user I didn't really use that feature enough.
Try this: Make a list of all the things that MC is missing vs sawfish (or The Ultimate Window Manager) and then work as you do normally and tick the times you miss each feature. I'd be willing to bet that in an honest test you'll find that you don't use them nearly as often as you think you do.
I'm no fan of the HIG and the cutting and slashing of features in the latest GNOME, but I'm also finding that a lot of it's not all that bad, because a lot of times It Just Works.